Bill and I spent a few days last month building the “musical instrument” pictured here. The idea is that the spoons bounce off the strings at different speeds since they are attached to rods of different lengths. You push down on the tennis balls, release them and the spoon just bounces off the string, like boing, boing, boing accelerating as the spoon bounces less high and ending up with a fast little bing, bing bing that turns into nothing as the sound dies out.
I guess you could say this is a prototype since it still needs some fine tunning. The first issue being amplification (non electric of course).
All attempts have ended up amplifying the vibrations that circulate within the wood, and not the fine, and fun harmonic overtones that the strings actually produce. Bill often uses Styrofoam to amplify his homemade instruments, a material that gives stunning results in his Tonatems, for instance. But figuring out how to get great (as opposed to “interesting” sound out of this crazy contraption will be a conundrum.
Another is tunning, although it was obvious that the strings would put a lot of tension on the frame, we had to reinforce it way more than planned and still it warps a bit. This makes it hard to tune since tightening or loosening any string affects them all…
Still none of this prevented folks from having fun with it Saturday May 24th (I was waiting for a picture before posting this), all the more since two – or more – can play at the same time! Bill had been hired by Job Service – a swiss company that helps 15 to 25 year olds find jobs and integrate the working world – for their 20th anniversary. This took place at one of the cities public squares and we had installed a bunch of Bill’s home made instruments to play with; one of a selection of activities that had been prepared, mostly for children.